Family stories and research stories that tell the tale of my personal research. If you have a similar family line or want to know more. Please contact me!

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Is it Pitsenbarger or Pitsenberger?

When you have German ancestry coupled with a strange name –
you come across some interesting spellings.
My great great grandmother’s name was Rebecca Jane “Frankie” Pitsenbarger. She was the youngest child of William
Pitsenbarger and his wife Mary Amick.
During my research into her family – I have seen the name Pitsenbarger
spelled numerous ways.

Rebecca Jane "Frankie" Pitsenbarger - my great great grandmother

The earliest known ancestor of my great great grandmother
was Abraham Pitzenberger who arrived sometime before 1766 probably from either
Germany or Switzerland. He married
Elizabeth Teysinger whose family came from the Alsace Lorraine region for
France which is an area that contains a lot of German people. Abraham and Elizabeth married in Lancaster
Co., PA and moved soon after to Virginia.
They named their children typical German names like Johann Jacob,
Abraham, Johann Peter, Elizabeth Ann, John and Philip. Abraham fought in the Revolutionary War and
dies aft 15 Apr 1781. I am descended
through his son Abraham, Jr. By this
time, the name has morphed from Pitzenberger to Pitsenbarger. Abraham married Mary Magdaline Cowger in 1795
in the Shenandoah Co., VA and their son, Peter is my 4th great
grandfather. The family has moved by
this time to what is now Nicholas Co., WV and Peter and his wife, Elizabeth
Amick have a large family of 11 children.
We are now down to William Pitsenbarger and his wife Mary Amick. You might have noticed that William’s wife
and mother have the same last name. I
noticed it too…it took me 6 months to track down how they were connected. Mary’s father, Jacob and William’s mother
Elizabeth were the children of Henry Amick, Jr. and Elizabeth Barbara Niemand…so
therefore William and Mary were first cousins.

The Pitsenbarger family is still fairly prevalent in the
West Virginia and in Darke Co., OH.
While researching this family you have to look for a number of spellings
– there is Pitsenbarger, Pittsenbarger, Pittsonberger, Pitsonbarger,
Pitzenberger, Pitsenberger and I’m sure many more that have escaped my
memory. It must have been a very challenging
name for the census takers, because you are never quite sure which spelling
that you will find. They will even have
brothers who have their families on the same census page with different
spellings for each one. I finally came
to the conclusion that I would standardize the spelling for my line as much as
I could.

I am not alone in my struggles to find common spellings of
names. In some ways, I probably have it
easier than most. At least you can
figure out the name by sounding it out… there is a reason that my favorite
college basketball coach is known as Coach K…can you imagine trying to spell Krzyzewski at all…it doesn’t really sound at
all like it is spelled.